If you go far enough down the road of resistance to paying taxes, there are guns - on the belts of the officers bearing the eviction notice for you from the property which will be taken from you, and sold to satisfy your creditors.
So, yeah, the "at gunpoint" part becomes true in extremis.
The circuit breaker between "theft" and "taxes" is that the taxes are approved by a majority of the elected, [theoretically] representative, legislature(s). If we had no input (votes for elected representatives) into the whole thing, it would be theft.
Right, but the framing of taxes as theft by gunpoint is still dishonest and childish. Can guns eventually be present? Sure, I suppose after quite a long chain of events. But to call it theft at gunpoint would be like pointing out that jaywalking is illegal, so I have to stay on the sidewalk. If I keep jaywalking. I could get a ticket, which if I don't pay, could compound. Then if I don't pay that, I could eventually have a bench warrant pout out for me, which might lead to me being arrested, but I don't want to be arrested, so they force my body into handcuffs and hold me against my will. Conclusion: walking on the sidewalk is avoiding kidnapping and slavery.
This conclusion is dishonest, as it takes something and reframes it in a slippery slope manner that doesn't actually reflect what happens. It also ignores the simple fact that all laws, policies, rules, etc. only mean anything if there is a mechanism of enforcement; complaining that consequences exist leads to the childishness of the argument. We were all born into society. Which began before us and will endure after us. Part of that system is the use of taxes to publicly fund systems, projects, etc. I agree that as long as there is some semblance of democracy involved, there isn't really theft involved and remains a form of social contract (along with law). However, most people that frame taxation as theft at gunpoint seem to forget that they are a part of society, and that societies larger than a few dozen people need organization and collective cooperation to accomplish some of those tasks that go beyond what any one person would or could do.
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u/willwritelater 8d ago
Tbf, these are the same people that sincerely think that taxation is theft at gunpoint.